A Girl Can Dream

Love story and un-love story intertwine in the brand-new thriller-romance from the globally bestseller author of The One Memory of Flora Banks, Emily Barr. Venice, 2024Hazel is on a spontaneous holiday with her stepbrother, Enzo, and best friend, Phoebe. They have just helped Hazel escape her increasingly destructive relationship with her older boyfriend, and have come away to celebrate her being her again.

In the dreamy Italian sunshine, Hazel is managing to relax, to stop looking over her shoulder in case Freddie has followed her here. But there’s a girl she keeps seeing in the city. A girl with beautiful eyes.

And whenever Hazel sees her and their eyes meet, something strange seems to happen - de ja vu, at first, and then even stranger things that make her wonder if she’s really in Venice at all . . .

England, 2022Hazel goes to see an up-and-coming local band with Enzo and some friends. She locks eyes with the lead singer, Freddie, during a song, and he finds her afterwards and slips her his number. She’s not even 16.

He is ten years older. She knows it’s stupid. She didn’t even think it was boys she was into.

Things with Freddie start wonderfully - flowers, dates, he even writes a song about her. It’s everything a girl could dream of. Until it’s absolutely not .